The Professor, the Tree and the Wardrobe
by meldahlie
Summary: What happened to Digory Kirke's Narnian Tree in London?


The Professor, the Tree and the Wardrobe

What happened to Digory Kirke's Narnian tree in London?

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Mrs Macready had always known Professor Kirke was eccentric. The evidences of it were almost too many to enumerate, from the Professor's personal appearance to his blithe unconcern about domestic problems. Attempts to explain such difficulties as moths or a leaking kitchen roof or the butler giving notice always ended in the Professor muttering "Plato, it's all in Plato. Bless me, what do they teach in them in these schools?" Mrs Macready was not personally acquainted with who Plato was, but she certainly pitied his wife.

However, the one eccentricity she had never before detected in the Professor was that of gardening. It was an eccentricity many gentlemen had: at the family down in Bressingham where she had started in service as a young girl, Old Mr Bloom couldn't have cared less if the house itself had fallen down, as long as the borders were planted and the lawns manicured. The Professor had never seemed that concerned, and yet here it was. An unexpected side-shoot as it were, to be ill-bred and make a pun. For what other reason could there be, when the great storm had wreaked havoc across England and played nine-pins with the ridge-tiles here at the House, for the Professor to rush suddenly up to his house in London in response to the telegram?

Mrs Macready had taken the tenant's telegram herself over the 'phone, and there was nothing else of possible concern in it. "No structural damage; tree in garden uprooted." What possible explanation could there be, other than gardening?

The London woodman was nearly as puzzled. Not over the gent's concern: after all, in the three days since the storm had torn through London he'd spent a lot of time dealing with people very concerned about fallen trees. It was the tree that puzzled him.

"I don't understand it, sir," he said, stepping back and looking around. "Most of the trees that are down are exposed, as it were. There's a whole avenue down in Maida Vale: wind just went straight up t'street. But this-" He shook his head. "This ought t'ave been sheltered."

The gent nodded slowly, and then bent to pat the fallen trunk as if it were a horse. "I planted it when I was a boy," he said sadly.

When he was a boy? The woodman blinked in surprise, and shifted his gaze from the tree to the gent himself. Greying, bearded, getting on a bit – but not that old. A tree this size?

"Indeed, sir?" he managed respectfully in the end. "It was a good size, then. Grew well." He tipped his head and considered the trunk again. He wouldn't have put it a minute under a hundred, but – there it was. "Must've had it's roots in something deeper then, sir."

He was about to suggest it might have pierced the drains or something, but the gent was suddenly staring at the sky, a far-away look on his face. 'Eccentric', the tenants had described him as. Not the sort of gent who was going to be interested in a cracked drain, when he was dreaming about his long-lost boyhood.

The woodman cleared his throat. "If I might suggest, sir," he said firmly, as the gent started and looked back from the past. "If you were – fond of it – memories an' all; apple wood's first rate for furniture and stuff. I know a cabinet maker who could get it seasoned and made up for you. A table, or a chest or, tree that big, a wardrobe if you wanted it."

A slow smile spread across the gent's face. "A wardrobe," he echoed. "I think Mrs McCready was telling me we needed a new wardrobe to keep my mother's old furs in."

The woodman nodded smartly. Might have known a gent like this didn't have a wife. "That's the ticket then, sir." He clapped his hat on again and turned for the house, pausing for the gent to follow.

The gent didn't follow immediately. He stood, looking at the tree and then bent to run his fingers through the wilting leaves. "Had its roots in something deeper," he said softly. "I do hope everything is all right."

In the Western Wilds of Narnia, the Tree of Protection lay burned and broken amidst the felled desolation of the Lantern Wood, where the White Witch's forces had passed through.

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 _A/N: This is a stand-alone, but there is more about the situation in Narnia in my earlier story "The Dawn Before the Dark."_


End file.
